The Mastering Show #106 - Are dynamics dead ?!

About this episode

In this episode, Ian Leapwing explores whether dynamics in music are truly dead amidst the loudness wars and discusses the implications for the future.

I see it every day: “The Loudness Wars are over - loud won. Get over it” And it’s easy to see why. The average mainstream release hits -8 LUFS integrated or more; club releases regularly hit -6 or even -4 LUFS and are peaking well above zero; every other post you see on social media is about a new limiter or clipping strategy… As the creator of Dynamic Range Day and Loudness Penalty , I should probably just give up and get my hat, right ? Maybe…. But maybe not. In this episode I dig into the evidence in 2026, and try to decide whether dynamics really are dead or not, looking at: The LUFS of the biggest recent releases Why no-one hears it Are mixes built too loud to be dynamic ? Why music fans don’t care (which could be good news) - and who does What do we do about it ? Reasons to be optimistic about dynamics in 2026 Links and more episodes here: www.themasteringshow.com/episode-106 Mentioned in this episode: Mastering Click HERE to work with Ian Leapwing Find out more about Leapwing's plugins Learn to master ! Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

People in this episode

Host: Ian Leapwing

Topics covered

• dynamics in music
• loudness wars
• mixing techniques
• music industry trends
• future of music dynamics

Keywords

• dynamics
• loudness wars
• LUFS
• mixing
• music trends
• mastering
• audio engineering

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Dynamic Range Day, Loudness Penalty, Leapwing

More episodes of The Mastering Show

• The Mastering Show #109 - Audio repair & fixing faults · May 29, 2026 · 46 min
• The Mastering Show #108 - Why I was wrong about Loudness Range · April 29, 2026 · 33 min
• The Mastering Show #107 - Mastering for 1-Off Vinyl (and short runs) · March 31, 2026 · 1h 9m
• The Mastering Show #105 - Loudness at the Grammys: is there REALLY a secret sauce ? · January 31, 2026 · 28 min
• The Mastering Show #104 - Mastering for Sync ? What, Why and How · December 23, 2025 · 48 min
• The Mastering Show #103 – Technical versus Creative Mastering (Q&A) · November 28, 2025 · 35 min